Someone forgot to tell Nathan Nagy that Game 2 was a pitchers’ duel.

After catcher Pablo Lopez delivered a clutch two-out, RBI single to tie the game in the sixth inning on Saturday morning about 14 hours after the at-bat started Friday night, it was Nagy who homered to lead off the seventh inning and deliver what became the game-winning run as the Knights (24-8-1) rallied to sweep their bi-district playoff series with Georgetown East View, 2-0.

Starter Sam Stevens, who remained the Knight pitcher despite the long delay caused by incessant lighting strikes Friday night, pitched out of a tight situation in the bottom of the seventh striking out two Patriots (15-17) to strand the potential tying run at third base.

KNIGHT STAR NO. 1 → PABLO LOPEZ

Before Nagy could deliver the game-winning hit, Lopez had to produce a hit to tie the game.

The second game of the playoff series between the Knights and Patriots resumed at East View this morning with Stevens on second base and Lopez at the plate with two out in the top of the sixth and the Knights trailing, 1-0.

Lopez said his immediate reaction to the lightning delay Friday night was disappointment.

“I was pretty bummed that they had to delay it to today because I was seeing the ball really well yesterday.”

Not one to sulk, Lopez decided to take advantage of the extra prep time. He figured he might as well study because he was having trouble getting to sleep. So instead of sleeping, he poured over film of his Thursday at-bats against Logan Niederhauser, the Patriot right-handed relief pitcher he expected to face on Saturday.

How did he know that East View was going to change pitchers, and how did he know which pitcher they were going to put in the game?

Well, Game 2 starter southpaw Patrick Reyes needed 80-plus pitches to get through five-plus innings on Friday, and the Patriots’ bullpen was depleted thanks to Thursday’s 13-11 slugfest that gave the Knights a 1-0 lead in the series.

“I was pretty sure especially because of how many people they burned Thursday,” Lopez said. “This was the only guy who was capable of pitching.”

In addition to his late-night study session, Prof. Lopez used his morning batting practice session on campus strategically before heading back to East View. Lopez said he focused on hitting the ball to the opposite field, so Stevens would have a better chance to score from second on a base hit.

When 11 a.m. finally arrived, Lopez discovered that he had guessed right about the pitching change. Having prepared wisely, he felt confident.

“When I got to the field I really just had to lock in and focus on doing what I have done for the past 15 years of my life: a simple opposite-field swing,” Lopez said. “I got to a plus count and found my pitch, and it all worked out.”

Lopez lofted the ball into short right field as if he’d hit it with a pitching wedge. It landed just in front of the Patriot right fielder, allowing Stevens the space and time to score easily.

Having tied the game at 1, the Knights nearly blew it open after that, loading the bases after Theo Friesem was hit by a pitch and Lyrr Friesem drew a walk, but the Patriots finally got the third out (14 hours after the half-inning started) retiring John Dietz on a swing and a miss after he had worked the count full.

Despite the missed opportunity, mission one was accomplished: the game was tied.

Unlike his Patriot counterpart, Stevens returned to the mound on Saturday despite the long delay.

Stevens said there was not much debate about him staying in the game to pitch.

Needing only 46 pitches through five innings Friday night, he had a lot of life left in his arm, the same right arm that efficiently limited the Patriots to just two hits Friday night.

“It was difficult to come out today and deal with the fatigue after pitching last night,” Steven said.

But the junior dealt with the challenge by trusting the wisdom of his normal pregame routine and not deviating from it.

“I have a pretty set routine that I do before I pitch,” he said. “I like to take about an hour before to warm up, and it helps keep my body and arm healthy when pitching.”

His arm seemed awfully healthy from his first pitch on Saturday. Stevens struck out the first batter he faced, then yielded a one-out infield single before inducing a fly out to left-fielder Charlie Cox and a pop out to Lopez to extinguish the threat and send the game into the seventh inning with a tie score.

KNIGHT STAR NO. 2 → NATHAN NAGY

And this is where the game story becomes Nagy’s.

The inning before he could be heard in the dugout urging the Friesem brothers not to overswing during their at-bats.

“Baserunners win games,” he would say of his mindset before stepping up to the plate to lead off the top half of the seventh.

Like Lopez, Nagy faced Niederhauser on Thursday and got a base hit, so he felt confident.

“I’ve been in leadoff spots like this before this season in close games, so I was pretty comfortable.”

As a team, the Patriots warmed up quickly for the top half of the seventh, so Nagy took his time getting in the batter’s box in order to slow the game down and disrupt the Patriots’ collective rhythm.

The first pitch was low and outside, but Nagy was encouraged by how well he saw the pitch coming out of the pitcher’s hand. When the second pitch found more of the plate, Nagy was ready and crushed a line drive to deep left field.

He joked afterward that he may have been the last person in the park to know that he had hit a home run.

Nagy’s initial thought was to book it to second base to make sure he got an extra-base hit.

“I get made fun of in film for how hard it looks when I run,” Nagy said. “In the first game, when I got to second the shortstop said to the second baseman how slow I was and not a threat to steal, but I scored on the next hit from second. So I guess chopping works.”

Maybe so, but his blast had made chopping unnecessary in this particular game moment. As Nagy booked it around first, he didn’t see the left-fielder turn and look forlornly past the fence as Nagy’s blast left the yard. When Nagy heard the Mac fan section cheering loudly, he knew he could stop chopping and start trotting.

He certainly picked a good time to hit his first home run as a Knight and the first for the entire team this season.

Before we get to what happened next, it is important to take a step back and realize the movie-script improbability that Nagy would homer in this moment.

In his post-game speech to the team, assistant coach Steve Searle joked that Nagy was the last player he would predict to hit the team’s first home run of the season.  Nagy agreed.

“I expected Pablo, Sam, Theo, or Lyrr to be the ones,” Nagy said.

A year ago, Nagy was a designated pitcher and did not hit at all as a result. But he has worked hard to improve his hitting by focusing on his mental approach and the success of that work was on clear display on Saturday.

“It’s mainly not over thinking mechanically and just competing to get on base,” Nagy said. “I really only think about catching the ball with the barrel now and getting my foot down early enough to not get jammed.”

So, now that he’s done both, how does hitting a home run compare to throwing a no-hitter?

“[Hitting a homer is] definitely different,” Nagy said, “but both [are] very satisfying.”

Maybe Nagy is still a pitcher at heart after all.

Shortstop Nico Sanchez nearly followed Nagy’s home run with the second Mac home run of the season, but his shot to left caromed off the wall on a hop for a double. After a change of pitchers, however, the Patriots wriggled out of the Knight half of the seventh only trailing by one.

KNIGHT STAR NO. 3 → SAM STEVENS

Stevens came out to the mound in the bottom of the seventh inning to finish on Saturday what he started on Friday. After a leadoff single and a successful sacrifice bunt, the potential tying run advanced to third after a Stevens change-up eluded Lopez.

The bond that Stevens and Lopez have after many years as a battery is illustrated by the fact that Stevens called the unfortunate play a wild pitch while Lopez called it a passed ball. Clearly, they have each other’s backs, and both wanted to take personal accountability for the error.

In a tight situation, a close pitcher-catcher bond comes in handy, and it did on Saturday.

“I was really just trying to make him feel as confident as he could on the mound,” Lopez said of how he encouraged Stevens. “For the next two batters, me and him focused extremely hard on attacking the zone and doing all we could to not issue a free bag.”

With a runner on third, Searle, who calls the pitches, Lopez and Stevens opted for a simple approach: challenge the hitters with Stevens’ best pitch.

“I was just trying to stay within myself and hit my locations with each pitch,” Stevens said. “My fastball felt pretty live, so I was able to generate swings and misses.”

Lopez said that he set up outside to try and force weak contact or a strikeout.

The strategy worked perfectly. In between the two K’s, Searle summoned the infield to the mound for a strategy session.

“Coach Searle was just telling Sam to stay composed and that he was doing a great job, which he was,” Lopez said.

The meeting took so long that the umpire had to come out to the mound to break it up, but even after he arrived, Searle kept the conversation going a bit longer.

This observer wonders if Searle might have been trying to slow the game down in the same way that Nagy did before stepping up the plate to start the seventh inning.

Nagy called it taking “my sweet time … to mess with their flow.” Sportswriters would call it gamesmanship.

Regardless of what the motive was, it worked, like most everything the Knights tried on Saturday.

Now that the team has advanced past the first round, the next question is how far the team can go.

The Knights have flirted with long playoff runs for more than a decade, but after two late-inning comebacks to win this series, these Knights have inspired the confidence of their fans, their coaches and most importantly the players themselves.

Nagy says the team is closer this year because the roster is so small.

“We are a pretty small team in numbers,” he said. “I think our adversity through games with as little as 10 guys has helped us grow closer.”

Lopez says that when it comes to the will to win, roster size doesn’t matter.

“I think this team has a lot of fight, and we all have the will to win more than I think before,” Lopez said. “This [series win] is all of us players just not wanting to go home and fighting to stay in it.”

That fight was certainly in evidence on Saturday as it was all weekend.

The Knights next face Lake Creek (21-9), which defeated Killeen Shoemaker, 12-1, in a single-game bi-district matchup on Thursday. The Lions run-ruled the Wolves in six innings.

FRIDAY KNIGHT RECAP

UNFINISHED BI-DISTRICT BUSINESS

The two offensive sixth-inning heroes of Game 1 were center stage again this evening in Game 2.

After delivering the game-tying and game-winning hits in the sixth inning on Thursday, junior Sam Stevens and senior Pablo Lopez had a chance to deliver a second sixth-inning comeback on the road at East View Friday night.

Leading the bi-district playoff series 1-0, the Knights trailed 1-0 in Game 2 but were threatening to score after Stevens advanced to second on a fielder’s choice throwing error by the Patriot second baseman. Stepping up to the plate with two out and Stevens in scoring position, Lopez was interrupted by a lightning delay that froze the game at that point.

Almost an hour later and after several lightning strikes made it clear the game was not going to restart anytime soon, the coaches met and decided to meet back at the East View park at 11 a.m. tomorrow and finish what they started Friday night.

If the Patriots hold their one-run lead, the teams will play Game 3 at 1 p.m. at Burger Stadium (so long as it’s not raining there early Saturday).

The Game 2 pitcher’s duel was a drastic departure from the slugfest that was Game 1.

The Knights managed only three hits off of lefty Patrick Reyes through five innings, and starting pitcher Stevens only allowed the Patriots two.

Charlie Cox and Nico Sanchez hit back-to-back singles in the top of the second but were stranded.

Lopez singled in the top of the third but was called out on an attempted steal after it appeared that he avoided the tag by cleverly reaching for the base with his right hand toward the outfield side of the bag.

The Patriots scored in the fifth. A leadoff hit batsmen advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt, to third after a base hit and home on a sacrifice fly.

In the top of the sixth, Nico Sanchez drew a leadoff walk but was forced at second on Stevens’ grounder to the left side. The second baseman’s throw was wild, allowing Stevens to advance to second and give Lopez a chance to drive him home with two outs.

THURSDAY KNIGHT RECAP

MAC RALLIES TO CLAIM GAME 1 WIN

For a team that has staked its claim to team history with dominant pitching, the Knights (23-8-1) were saved Thursday night by clutch hitting in the form of two late two-run knocks that turned a late deficit into a come-from-behind playoff victory.

Trailing by four runs in the decisive bottom of the sixth, Sam Stevens blasted a two-run double to tie the game, and Pablo Lopez stroked a two-run single to provide the game-winning runs in the Knights’ eventual 13-11 victory.

It’s not very often you allow a nine-run inning and exit the dugout with a win, but that’s exactly what happened Thursday night at Northwest Park as the never-say-die Knights survived a roller coaster game to take Game 1 of their best-of-three bi-district playoff series against Georgetown East View (15-16).

The Knights led 5-1 after four then allowed the Patriots nine runs in the top of the fifth as East View took a 10-5 lead midway through the inning. The Patriots still led 11-7 when the Knights rallied to claim the game in the bottom of the sixth.

Nico Sanchez shut the door on the Patriots in the top of the seventh to secure the win. Afterward, he said the Knights were motivated partly by their loss to these same Patriots early in the season.

“We just really wanted to compete,” Sanchez said. “We knew everything they had, so we had to be ready for it.”

The Patriot offense was led by Patrick Reyes who went 2-fo-5 with three RBI’s and Ben Berglund who had two hits.

Sanchez said that the combination of fan support and internal motivation allowed the Knights to push through the game’s darkest hour.

“We have the home field advantage, fans supporting us,” he said. “We don’t want to go home, we want to go to State.”

As for tonight’s Game 2, Sanchez said to expect more of the same.

“We need to pitch a little better,” he said, “but other than that we got it.”

—with reporting by Julia Copas

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